A couple weeks back I posted a picture of our two new baby goat neighbors down the street. The owners have taken to putting a note on the fence for passers-by to keep everyone up to date on their progress. Apparently their names are Bucky & Rusty, and they have been absent from the fence for a week or so. Now we know why.
I do enjoy living in our odd little neighborhood…. a little bit of the country in the city.
I am splitting my time today between work and spot watering the trees and shrubs (and, ok, a little blogging, too). As I was watering the herb garden, I noticed the big furry sage leaves.
I decided to snap a few pictures, and decided to see if B&W would make the texture pop, and it did.
We’ll have to stuff a chicken with some of these leaves soon.
Today Hurricane Irene is marching north along the eastern US coast dumping tens of inches of rain. I wish all those folks well and hope everyone stays safe. But I sure do wish we had some of that rain here.
Temps are hovering between 105 and 110 again. All the animals are terribly stressed. We are keeping bird baths brimming with fresh water every day all over the yard. Today I saw 3 of these finches camped out on the window sill in the shade. They have given up trying to get anything out of the hummingbird feeder. After these guys flew away I put a container of water on the sill. I hope they come back and find it.
This is a picture of a flower that surrounded the entrance to the restaurant where went for dinner tonight. The orange color was very vibrant, even though dusk had set in and the light wasn’t great.
The hostess told us that it is a flower called the Pride of Barbados, which is the national flower of Barbados. Very pretty!
Sadly, today marked the 70th day of 100+ degree temperatures this year in Austin. That breaks the old record of 69 days that stood since 1925. We came close to breaking it 2 years ago.
The current forecast shows another 7-10 days or so of similar weather ahead, so stay tuned.
I really hope we don’t have to experience this again in our lifetimes. Whooo-wee!
The other night I had a hankering for chicken satay, so I looked up a recipe for the marinade and several hours later we had a tasty dinner. We ate them so fast that I forgot to take a photo.
So, I made them again tonight (making sure got get a photo this time) and they were even better. The peanut sauce is a *must have* to dip them in. You can make your own peanut sauce, or buy some… we had some on hand, so we didn’t have to make it this time. We have a little hibachi charcoal grill out back which is just perfect for cooking these.
Here’s the recipe, in case you want to try it as well:
Chicken Satay
Serves 2. Marinate 4-24 hours. Grill 5-6 minutes. Medium heat on grill.
1 lb. chicken breast tenderloins, or breasts that are boned, skinned & sliced into long strips
Peanut oil
Place chicken pieces in dish. Combine marinade ingredients and rub into meat. Cover and refrigerate 4 to 24 hours. If your skewers are combustible, don’t forget to soak them in water ahead of time! Thread meat onto skewers. Brush meat with peanut oil just before cooking. Grill 2-3 minutes on each side. Serve immediately with peanut sauce.
Monte brought home a bouquet of small roses with the groceries the other night. This is a shot of one of the blooms up close. Very pretty 🙂
We stopped by our local pub, BB Rovers, to grab dinner and a beer or two this evening. This is a shot of their ceiling ducks above our table.
We have goats that live down the street. They are a frequent stop on most neighbors’ morning/evening walks through the neighborhood, and they love to walk up to the fence to be fed whatever snacks the visitors bring them. One of the goats died recently, leaving the remaining old goat, Otto, by himself. He seemed very lonely. So we were happy to see these two new baby goats in the pen with him when we drove by tonight.
About 10 days ago I was asked to jump in on handling a client situation which has pretty much consumed my time 24/7 since then. Thankfully things are wrapping up so I can come out to play this weekend!
We are having a “slip-up” this weekend – that’s a term invented by B-dock to describe our overnight dock parties… kinda like a raft-up, but we don’t ever leave the slip! The lake is pretty low, which makes anchoring lots of boats in the shrinking coves difficult. And there is *no* wind expected for tonight, so it will make for a hot night. Oh, and this is a full-moon slip-up, the Sturgeon Moon, so there will be no viewing of the Perseid meteor shower that’s also supposed to happen tonight.
Ace’s birthday was earlier this month, and we missed it, so we brought him a toy gun that blows bubbles and lights up. This is a shot of it in action at night – you can’t see the bubbles but the light looks kinda cool, eh?
This picture reminds me of the song Lazer Beam by the Super Furry Animals. That youtube link isn’t the version that I like the best, but it will do. The recording I like is the one done in KUT Studios a couple years ago and featured as their song of the day, but the link on their archive page is broken, sadly.
It’s still hot and dry.
I spent time yesterday watering the trees out front. This evening after work I put some water on my nearly lost flower bed and the lawn out back.
I was surprised to see that one of my potted plants was hanging in there. Little pink blossoms thriving in spite of the heat and the drought.
Me too.
I’ve been very busy at work, working round the clock for the last 5 days or so on determining root cause of a critical outage at a client location that happened last week. I haven’t been able to come out to play, and was missing in action at the lake again this weekend.
Yesterday afternoon the doorbell rang and the nice man at the door was delivering warm cookies with cold milk! While I certainly didn’t need the calories, the thoughfulness certainly lifted my spirits. Thanks to Sue for providing the lift. 🙂
Hope to wrap this up soon.
P.S. a shout out to Tiff’s Treat’s … yummy!
As I walk out back, I can usually find lots of bird feathers on the ground. Sometimes a pile of them, marking the spot of a scuffle, sometimes just a single feather. The birds out back must really have to be on their toes at all times.
This is one of the blue jay feathers I found. Love the iridescent blue color.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had flowers in the house. Or in the yard, for that matter. We usually have steady stream of zinnias from our patch out back that bloom through the summer. But not this year. The heat this summer seems relentless and is sucking the life out of everything, including me. I have been taking photos from time to time during the week, but for whatever reasons, haven’t felt compelled to post anything here in a while.
It’s so cliche to complain about the heat, but I’m going to. The weathermen tell me tonight that we’ve just wrapped up the hottest July on record in Austin since they started keeping records in 1854. Of the 31 days in July, only 2 were under 100 degrees – but just barely, at 99. The first day of August is another record setter, and the hottest day this year, at 107. I had to stop, rewind and replay the DVR while watching the news tonight when I heard this one… current temp during the 10pm local newscast was 95 degrees. Sheesh.
This was a bad year for our sprinkler system to be out of commission. Hand-watering is such a pain – and takes more time out of an already busy day. The lawn is shot and we are now focused on keeping the stressed out trees alive.
Well, that brings me back to the fresh flowers. I saw these hydrangeas yesterday at HEB and they seemed so pretty and soft and such a sharp contrast to what I see outside, I just had to bring a bunch home.
Sheila365 